Cathy Come Home

I didn't see this when it came out but remember friends discussing it. It would have been on the Australian Broadcasting Commission Channel 2. Some how it always stuck in my mind and finally ordered the DVD. England was in a bad way after the War. War costs money and sometimes you wonder who won the war (or battle) as Japan and Germany seem to come out like Phoenix out of a fire. What went horribly wrong that so many people were left homeless, landlords allowed to rent hovels and the "No Children" clause. Separated families, men in one lodgings, wife and children in another. No visitations after 8pm. Sex obviously didn't happen before that time.

Not many films can claim to have resulted in a change in the law. "Cathy Come Home" is one of them.

This graphic, sympathetic depiction of a couple who become homeless in 60s Britain is still powerful. I watched just the eviction scene recently on TV and I felt intense anger at the injustice rising in me.

The film is plotted like a Greek tragedy - the couple's decline from prosperity is gradual at first, then accelerates horrifically. Unlike a Greek (or Shakespearian)tragedy, however, the characters are not the architects of their fate. They make mistakes, but their punishment is out of all proportion. They are the victims of a harsh and unfeeling system - but most of all of the hostile attitudes of their fellow citizens towards the homeless.

Most viewers at the time would have shared these prejudices - but the film showed them that there, but for the grace of God, they could go too.

The film gave a huge impetus to Shelter, the campaign for the homeless that had just started up. Few other campaigns except (later) CND have had such widespread support. Pressure from Shelter eventually led to a change of the law in 1977 which means that homeless families can no longer be treated as the protagonists of "Cathy" were (although the law certainly has its defects - for example the use of bed and breakfast as temporary accommodation, and its non-applicability to single homeless people).

"Cathy Come Home", if I recall rightly, was written for the BBC's famous "Wednesday Play" slot. Many brilliant plays were filmed for this series, including some early Dennis Potter, and that other influential polemical masterpiece "The War Game" - which the BBC refused to show in a cowardly acquiescence to Government pressure. "Cathy" shares with "The War Game" a quasi-documentary style, without commentary, which provides much of its realism. However the performance of the two leading players in "Cathy" is also perfect.

Issues of morality - whether we agree or not with director Ken Loach's view of his characters - are not really significant here: what makes CATHY COME HOME such an enduring classic half a century after its original release is its essential boldness.

Produced at a time when television drama actually could make a difference to public opinion, and the BBC regularly produced single plays dealing with contemporary issues, CATHY COME HOME tells a straightforward tale of the eponymous protagonist (Carol White) and husband Reg (Ray Brooks), who begin in relative affluence yet end up sliding down the housing ladder until they are left with absolutely nothing. They are forced to lead separate lives, with Cathy taking two of her children to a prison-like hostel while Reg has to find an apartment of his own. The action culminates in a memorable sequence taking place in an Essex railway-station where an indifferent gaggle of Social Service workers take Cathy's children away from her, leaving her in a tearful heap, bereft of anything and anyone.

Stylistically speaking Loach's production was highly influenced by the British documentary film movement of the previous decade with its cinéma-vérité style of fluid action, short sequences and voiceovers including Cathy herself as well as a variety of so-called do-gooders justifying their particular behaviors, even though none of them appeared to want to help the stricken couple. In an era still wedded to the idea of studio-bound drama, CATHY COME HOME came like a welcome breath of fresh air with its determination not to sentimentalize its characters and single-minded commitment to exposing social ills.

The harrowing final scenes, as Cathy's children are taken into care, caused an outrage. Within days of the broadcast, Loach and writer Jeremy Sandford had been summoned to a meeting of Birmingham Council's Housing Committee, as councilors were furious about the ways in which they had been portrayed. The homeless charity Shelter was established in a wave of anger at the way people had been treated.

Fifty years on, some of the attitudes might now seem dated - especially the casual racism and the basic distrust of nonwhite people - but the problem of homelessness still remains. How many more Cathys are there still roaming the streets of Britain's inner cities, relying on hand-outs and food banks for sustenance?

What to say about this one? Heartbreaking, bleak, hopeless take on unemployment and overpopulation in England. It's not overindulging, it's not constructed, it just is, which makes it even worse to watch.

Basically you'll be watching the slow disintegration of this young couple that falls in love and tries to start a family. What begins as a love story, ends up exposing a social security system, completely incapable of handling the overpopulation, or the people it affects.

It's depression in film form. But to Loach's great credit, the point, the punch of this movie, never feels strained. If you liked this (if you thought it was good that is), My Name is Joe could be next Loach film you should look into.

Firstly can I please put the record straight - this is NOT a movie, but a TV drama made by the BBC in 1966.

Carol White plays "Cathy", the mother, Ray Brooks the father. Through circumstances they find themselves destitute with nowhere to live.

Carol White's performance was absolutely without parallel, and I defy anyone who is a parent, to remain dry-eyed when the Social Welfare people find her seated on a bench with her children in a London railway station. The children are wrenched out of their mother's arms, the children screaming for their mother, and "Cathy" hysterical with emotion, trying to prevent their removal. How could we ever have lived with such a barbaric system? This drama served as a landmark in Social Services methods within the UK, and Carol White's superb portrayal will forever be regarded as instrumental in bringing about change.

I would like to be able to report that such things no longer happen in the UK, but I cannot. Perhaps in not such a heart-wrenching way, children are still removed from their families on the pretext of "child welfare" priorities. Priorities that are distorted by the setting of Government adoption targets - so just who is helping who here?

This is not family viewing, but is an important historical account of a time that none of us should be proud.